Tonight's red post collection includes a look at the new Battle for Baron merch store promotion, a dev blog on the recently launched Universe story hub, a look at the new League Fan Art Showcase, context on recent Varus PBE changes an upcoming Rylai's Crystal Scepter changes, Camille discussion, & more!

The Battle for Baron in the Merch Shop

The Battle for Baron merch store promotion has spawned, including several new item to purchase! Now through December 8th, enjoy stacking discounts on figures & shirts, rotating sales, & more.

"The biggest merch event of the year is here. The Battle for Baron has begun. From November 22 to December 8 stack savings with all shirts and figures 2 for $30, summon a mystery plush ally, grab special rotating items and register on the merch site to join the fight with a special Merch Quest. After you register, win two games where your team kills Baron and unlock the special limited edition Baron figure for $30."

As mentioned above, the STACKS ON STACKS promotion is running through November 8th - offering discounts on individual t-shirts and LoL Series 1 & 2 figures and an even larger discounts when purchasing 2 at the same time! This includes the four new figures and six new shirts seen above.

You'll also be able to take advantage of a $15 mystery LoL plush ($20 - $30 value) through December 8th.

Once you've activated, you'll have until 12/8/16 to complete the quest and pre-order the Baron figure in the Ultimate Baron Merch Quest secret store. Price: $30. Estimated ship date: April 2017."

Across The Universe

Following last week's release of the new UNIVERSElore site, a new Nexus dev blog by JustinShull covering the as been released covering the reasons behind creating the new story hub.

"For years, the best way to find stories about champs and the regions they hail from was to do a Google search and hope Lady Luck was smiling. We knew there should be a better way for players to explore the world of League of Legends, so we set out to build a more accessible, immersive experience.

Enter Universe, where players can delve into the stories of Runeterra.

COMPILING LOST CONTENT

Tales about League’s universe were once scattered across a bunch of disconnected pages and microsites. We’d release new content, get really excited about it, then immediately disappear it into the interwebs when new stuff came out. New players were missing out on stories like Burning Tides because they started playing a season late, and old players could spend an unreasonable amount of time searching for a thing they remembered liking a few years back.

There was no true home for stories about the world of League of Legends.

Entering Shurima

We wanted to build a site where players could easily access the realm of Runeterra—a place to wander the alleys of Zaun, survive the sands of Shurima, and endure the chill of the Freljord. Additionally, we had a ton of stories and artwork featuring the landscapes and cultures of Runeterra that we’d never released, and the idea of Universe gave us a dedicated place to share them.

Universe also allows players to peruse the vast collection of art and artifacts about Runeterra’s diverse occupants. At last, there’s a place to find more information about everybody’s favorite yordle.

WAIT, SO WE’RE GETTING MOAR LORE?!

Yes, but there’s something about the word “lore” that brings to mind dusty pages of archaic history hidden in voluminous tomes tucked high on an abandoned library shelf. Stories can be conveyed through many of mediums, and the ones on Universe are told through cinematics, comics, artwork, soundtracks, and videos —as well as written text.

“Lore” also implies a singular, permanent truth, but Runeterra’s landscapes and characters change over time. Expansive worlds like the Marvel Cinematic Universe inspire us to establish Runeterra as a place whose potential for character-driven stories is virtually unlimited. We want to share this world, in all of its depth and complexity, in a way that transcends beyond traditional lore.

Streets of Piltover

LOOKING FORWARD

Universe is expanding, and there are many frontiers to explore. Most of today’s content is actually yesterday’s, but now it’s all collected in one place. There’s some new stuff, such as unreleased concept art and a handful of short stories, but we’ve got a lot more in the works and big plans for the years to come. Our goal is to release new narrative content more frequently than in previous years, especially now that we have a better platform to publish on.

Shadow Isle Castle

Your feedback while Universe is in Beta will help to make it the proverbial shit, and we’re looking to pursue the features and stories you’re most interested in. Maybe you’re curious about what’s up with Vi’s sister or the Darkin? Would you like to see more artwork, cinematics, or long-form stories? Are you interested in a comic book reader or audio texts?

Please, let us know! We’re excited to hear your suggestions and ideas about how to expand Universe and Runeterra. Feel free to drop your feedback below, or wander over to Universe and share your thoughts later in the survey."

League Fan Art Showcase

Riot has launched a new FAN ART SHOWCASE hub where players can vote on their favorite fan art from all over the community as well as submit their own!

"We’re collecting the greatest fan art from around the world with global and regional contests, fan artist spotlights, and a community voting system! The Showcase is now live, so take a gander at what we’ve gathered, and let us know what you think."

Camille Discussion

When asked how her passive decides between the type of of shield to give, Riot Jag noted:

"Quote:

how is her passive determined?

Good question! Camille essentially understands every champion's PvP premitigation damage (before resistances) that they've done throughout the entire game, and also understands her own resistances. She combines this information to determine the best shield she should get. So, for example, if Jax has somehow built a lot of AP but is still doing more Physical damage, she will probably get a Physical shield unless she has very high armor.

TL;DR Camille gets the best shield to defend her against the champion she hits."

When asked if Camille's R originated from a scrapped Fiora R concept that was mentioned in the past, Meddler shared:

"Camille's ult follows a similar thought process to some of those old Fiora ults, it's not one of them directly though. The variations on that theme we tried with Fiora were both longer duration and much more exclusionary. In Fiora's case it was about creating a situation where no one could interfere, in Camille's case having your team save you's very much part of the expected counterplay."

So seeing how there's plans for a Diver class update sometime next year (either midseason or preseason), does Cami represent Riot's modern vision of what a Diver is? You know, similar to how Nasus represented Riot's vision of what a Juggernaut is. I'm just curious to see if Cami is the direction Riot plans to push Divers. Obviously, I doubt she's the ideal Diver.

I mean it be pretty bizarre to release a new Diver then push the rest of the class in a different direction.

Yes! She is a pretty good representation of the direction we want to take with Divers in the future."

I had an idea to try and automate the robot processing in and out of the clean voice based on our talent's voice intensity. The higher the intensity in volume, the more the robotic elements would poke out. As she dropped back down into her normal range in the recordings, the processing would die away.

However, the story behind the processing is an interesting one. Ill go ahead and be completely forward with you and spill the beans. Even thought I knew what I wanted to try before I started, I landed on this voice processing not by 100% understanding exactly what I was doing...

Warning: I am totally about to geek out here, so if you are curious or an audio nerd... continue on...

To get a little technical, and if you're and audio person you'll probably follow a bit better, you utilize a dummy track of the VO that doesnt play into your main signal. This dummy track controls a compressor that pulls the volume down on your clean voice track based on how loud the dummy track gets. Every time the dummy track peaks over a set volume, the compressor kicks in and pulls the clean voice volume down. Then on your robot style processing, you use a gate plug-in that is controlled by when the previously mentioned compressor plug-in kicks in. When the gate opens, the robot voice comes through and blends with the clean voice over. Cue hours of tweaking settings and parameters until it blends realistically.

To execute all of this it can get a little complicated - especially when you combine how to make the robot voice (it actually caused a lot of really interesting technical secondary issues), but what's really neat about this technique is that you are not combining the two voices without at least subtracting from one. If you just had the robot voice kick in without turning the clean track down, you would have wildly loud voice over with the two played together, and quiet voice when it was just the clean. This technique automates this process for you and creates a fairly seamless blend of the two voices, and its done by utilizing the natural performance of the talent to do so. Sweeeet.

I have to keep some of you in suspense and keep the recipe for the "robot voice" a mystery, but the real meat to this technique is how to blend the two voices. ;P

The reason why it was an accident was because I literally had no clue on actually how to do this as I was attempting to do it haha. I literally just bumbled through things that I thought seemed reasonable to achieve the end result of this processing chain idea. Once it seemed to work, I walked myself backwards through the chain and tweaked out the stuff that didnt seem to be hitting the mark. I even forgot how I set it all up initially after coming back to it a couple days later, and had to get another sound designer here to walk through my own processing chain to make sure I hadnt lost the initial idea in a mass of routing spiderweb. It really is a testament to experimentation and pushing yourself outside of the box and comfort zone, you can come up with some pretty weird stuff!
Thanks a lot for props - hope you enjoyed the explanation of how it was made!!"

More on Camille can be found in our [6.24 PBE cycle coverage], including release skin previews, stats & ability scalings, full voiceover, and more!

Check out Camille’s PBE Gameplay

Speaking of Camille, her designer Riot Jag and crew hopped on the LoL twitch channel to host a PBE gameplay preview and discussion stream!

"Join Camille’s designer Riot Jag at 2 PM Pacific Time for Q&A and a live PBE demo of Camille’s gameplay. If you’re here a bit early, leave your questions in the comments below so we can address them right off the bat!"

Rylai's Crystal Scepter Changes to PBE soon.

When asked when we will see the heavily discussed Rylai's Crystal Scepter changes, Riot Axesnoted they will be up on the PBE soon!

"Should be on PBE soon (today or tomorrow), ship in 6.24. Will still be an AP/Health item.

The direction is going to be shrinking it down a bit - less cost, less stats, exact numbers still in flux a bit - and flattening the passive out to 20% in all cases, which makes it preferentially better on champions who can apply that slow repeatedly (or when it matters) rather than having the passive attempt to make it comparably valuable over many different types of AP champions."

"The live balance team is going to be monitoring champions and their performance post Rylai's removal."

Meddler on PBE Varus Changes

Meddler ventured on to the boards to share a few tentative Varus passive changes currently in testing:

"We've got a buff to Varus's passive coming shortly (probably hitting PBE tomorrow) intended to increase both power and satisfaction of auto attack builds. Numbers currently in testing are a 0.5 bonus AS ratio on champion kills/assists and a 0.25 bonus AS ratio on minion/monster kills. If you've got 60% bonus AS from items then for example the champion proc will give you 70% AS (40% base +30% ratio). Both buffs also have a standardized duration of 5s (versus 6s/3s)."

We're happy supporting Varus as an AD caster. There have been a number of times though when auto attack builds have been pretty weak but caster builds strong, meaning it hasn't been appropriate to just generally buff Varus. We're adding something specific to those auto attack builds as a result to allow us to better support both styles."

/ALL Chat | Halloween Pets!

"On this episode of Summoner Showcase, Josh and Sam show off some pets dressed up as champions, a Soraka Facebook sticker cosplay (not a description I ever thought I’d be writing) and more! Do you have any art, cosplay, or creations you’d like to see featured on Summoner Showcase? Comment below!"

Quick Hits - LCU Alpha Tester Icon, PBE changes, & more

[Quick hits is our own mini news collection inside a red post collection, often including shorter or easy to digest stories and repeat information you may have missed in other posts! ]

The exclusive summoner icon for those who participated in the LCU Alpha has started to be distributed to eligible summoners on live! Look to have yours by November 29th.

Repertoir tweeted there should be changes to Rengar's Bonetooth Necklace on the PBE soon.

Trikny commented on reddit that BOTH teams being able to see when players from either team reconnected is a bug and will be fixed soon.

"Hi friends! This is in fact a bug and it was introduced by my team when fixing a previous bug, we are already working on a fix and will try to get it to you asap. I am really sorry for any pain this might have caused )="